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Exiled Tibetan leader to visit Peace Memorial Park

Date Posted: 2009-01-08

The Dalai Lama will be visiting Okinawa this Fall, with plans to pray for war dead at Peace Memorial park in Itoman City.
It will be the 14th generation Dalai Lama’s second visit to Japan in a year, following a trip to Fukuoka Prefecture last November for a lecture. The Dalai Lama’s travel here is being orchestrated by the Dalai Lama Pope Okinawa Invitation Committee, which invited him while in mainland Japan. Chairman Nobuo Nagamine talked about Okinawa, and how the setting warranted a Dalai Lama visit.
The Dalai Lama was born in Tibet, a country China now claims as a southwest district of its own. The 73-year-old Dalai Lama took the throne in 1940, but was forced to flee Tibet following a 1959 civil uprising and riots against the Chinese military. The Tibetan priests went into exile in India, where the Dalai Lama has been teaching Tibetan people about self-government and establishing a new government in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama has told the world he is against fighting, and always talks and negotiates. His active stance against violence led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1989.